Time flies, but it also drags. We've had some qualified good news in that Lin's white blood cells have recovered sufficiently for us to pack our bags.
But we're still in limbo because he's now scheduled for a consult with the endoscopy specialist (this coming Monday) and until he's had his colonoscopy his feet are still nailed to the floor here in Singapore.
Thus far I have made some flight bookings and the ETD from Hong Kong is March 30th, 2011, with arrival in Ponte Vedra early April! Unless something untoward happens we should be able to make that deadline. It's the Singapore-HKG leg that is the moveable feast.
Prof. Wong is quite pleased that Lin has put on some weight. Unfortunately for me, I too have put on some weight - about 4 kilos since September last year! Must be the stress and keeping him company coaxing him to eat!
I have not been good about keeping all of you posted in recent weeks and I have wondered why. Is this experience starting to become tiresome? Yes, somewhat. Look at it this way, sometimes pushing a rock uphill calls for short rests!
But it is probably more about battling health insurance bureaucracy, in this case BUPA HK and the beady-eyed bods in their Claims Department.
After a hectic few months I settled down enough to put together the bits of paper we had accumulated from hospitals and such and sent them off for reimbursement. And that marked the beginning of a long and tedious trek to fulfill their requirements; the list of supporting documents looks innocuous enough at first glance. But be forewarned - or as we learn the hard way, get yourself a decent insurance broker.
Their claims forms are confusing (starting with trying to decide WHICH form is the correct form) and belie the amount of information that is needed - we have spent months shuffling from pillar to post to satisfy the Claims tartars.
Now I believe it when I read that doctors in some countries have quit practicing because of the amount of red tape they have to deal with in between treating the sick. That and the malpractice insurance premiums, no doubt.
In Hong Kong (and even in the USA) some doctors refuse to accept any form of health insurance - it's strictly cash, cheque, VISA or Mastercard. Or any combination of the foregoing. And I don't blame them having tried to walk the walk with the paperwork.
This saga began in September (about the time I started to put on weight so that puts the kibosh on me being fat when happy!). We had to appeal to have some claims accepted for review because some of our earlier bills missed the 90 day deadline for filing.
It seems most unfair that when one is least prepared to tackle (and has the least time for assembling and submitting) health insurance reimbursements is the time they must be in the clutches of the Claims Department. 90 days is too short a time when the family is dealing with a major illness or injury.
Anyway, getting hold of the same person at the end of the phone is like being in pursuit of the holy grail and Lin wasted much time recounting the situation to successive customer service personnel. In the end we managed (through divine intervention?) to transition to corresponding by email with the same person and that has been a help in recent months. What a relief!
I also discovered (who checks out these things when all is well?) that Lin's health insurance policy was being handled directly by one of Bupa HK's office sales staff with whom we had not exchanged a word with all this time, so long story short we switched to using an insurance broker recommended by a friend.
The only time we heard from this individual was when he emailed us to confirm whether if was Lin's intention to switch to a broker.
By the time that the switch was confirmed by Bupa the bulk of our claims were already in the pipeline so I continued rolling the rock uphill.
The system at the hospital means that we routinely obtained tax invoices and credit card charge slips. Having paid by Medisave and our credit card, we did not know to ask for the official receipts. Bupa would not accept the tax invoices accompanied by the credit card slips; they demanded receipts too.
And if we forgot or did not obtain an invoice when we left the hospital, we could ask for and were issued duplicate tax invoices at the next visit. These were not acceptable (Bupa seems to think that the presence of the word 'duplicate' means that their clients have tendered the originals to another insurance company!).
In the last month, the customer relations officer we have been liasing with at Bupa managed to contact the central finance and administration office at NUH and asked for receipts - that's how I learned where to go for them. What a revelation - it was the key log in easing that logjam!
Then, unknown to us, the Claims Department - a law unto itself - kept sending letters by snail mail to our Hong Kong address to ask for more details (despite us having spoken and written to Bupa to contact us in Singapore). These demands required that the submission be made within a month; not exactly easy when we do not receive our HK mail here in Singapore.
Anyway, another piece of mindless bureaucracy is the requirement that each claim must be accompanied by a letter from the doctor stating the diagnosis and the treatment! Surely any human being with a modicum of commonsense would accept that the diagnosis was made in April when the cancer was first detected - and had not changed.
As for treatment, surely that was obvious from the invoices and receipts which stated what was done. But no, the doctors have to provide covering letters.
In the end Prof. Wong wrote a letter summarising what had happened between May 24 and December, which he kindly provided. Thank goodness the Prof. has been most understanding.
Since then we have periodically submitted lists (signed by the Prof.) headed with the description of the condition followed by the dates and treatment or diagnostic tests ordered (all this merely repeated what the other bits of paper had to say).
The 'war' is not over yet.
We appear to have surpassed the annual or other limits for some of the claims. Again it doesn't make sense because the benefit limit for diagnostics is really rather low so that when one has more than two or three scans and various tests, including blood tests, the budget's blown.
So how's the doctor going to monitor the progress of the treatment and to see if anything else is brewing?
If it's been boring and exhausting to read this, you can well imagine what it's been like to live it, all 4 kilos worth.
Friday 18 March 2011
Saturday 12 March 2011
What Can I Say?
The BBC recently released a four-part series "What Can I Say?" which explores freedom of speech and democracy in South East Asia. Presenter Gary Bryson travelled to Indonesia, Cambodia, Thailand and Singapore to meet people who are trying to find a voice for their village, their culture or their nation. You can listen to the podcast here:
Listen and make up your own mind.
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